The present invention relates to an information recording/reproducing apparatus such as a video tape recorder (hereinafter abbreviated as "VTR"), and more particularly, relates to an information recording/reproducing apparatus suitable for video searching (hereinafter abbreviated as "SEARCH") in the fast feeding (hereinafter abbreviated as "FF") or rewinding (hereinafter abbreviated as "REW") of a magnetic recording medium (hereinafter referred to as "video tape").
VTRs use long and continuous video tapes as a recording medium, so that recording can be continued for a long time of 6 hours or more. However, VTRs have a problem that a long time is required for searching a desired scene recorded on the video tape and that the exact position of the scene cannot be found easily. The problem is caused by the fact that recording information is recorded on a video tape serially in the direction of running of the video tape on the whole. Accordingly, the video tape must be fed till the desired scene appears. In such VTRs, main examples of searching systems which have been put into practice are (1) a tape counter system, (2) a cue review system, and (3) an index/address system. In the following, the respective systems are described in brief.